
Class X— 

Book M 



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PRESENTED BY 



THE 



MYSTERY OF PAIN: 



% §00k fat % SbattobiM. 



BY 

JAMES HINTON, 

>i 

author of " man and his dwelling place;" "life in 
nature;" etc., etc. 



~I cried to tiiee, O Lord, and unto the Lord I made supplication. 
Wkat raonT is there in my blood?" 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
549 & 551 BROADWAY. 
1872. 



■$S\+^ 



GIFT 

BERTRAM SMITH' 

^ W I 7933 






To 

My Mother, 

from who?n these thoughts, 

not uttered in words, but acted out i?i life, 

have come to me, 

3E Uetu'cate 

them as her own, 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 



CHAPTER I. 



^"T^HIS book is addressed to the sorrowful. 
It may be there are some in whose lives 
pleasure so far overbalances pain, that the 
presence of the latter has never been felt by 
them as a mystery. It is probable that there 
are more who, through native strength of 
mind, or felicity of circumstance, are able to 
meet the questions that arise out of it with 
unoppressed hearts, and who have so strong a 
faith in good that they can, without difficulty, 
resolve all forms of evil into it. To these I do 
not address myself ; but there is another, and, 
I think, a more numerous class, to whom their 
own or others' pain is a daily burden, upon 
whose hearts it weighs with an intolerable 



The Mystery of Pain. 



anguish. I seek to speak to these ; not as a 
teacher, but as a fellow. Sharing their feel- 
ing, and knowing well how vain is the attempt 
to throw off misery, or to persuade ourselves 
that life is better than it is, I would fain share 
with them also some thoughts that have seemed 
to me capable of casting a bright gleam of 
light athwart the darkness, and, if they are 
true, of bringing an immense, an incredible 
joy out of the very bosom of distress. 

It seems to me, indeed, that nothing less 
than this will suffice ; that pain must furnish 
its own consolation, if it is to be consoled at 
all ; or rather that it must give more than 
consolation — that it must give joy. If it can 
be made fruitful thus, if a rejoicing can be 
seen to be rooted in sorrow, not sometimes 
only, but absolutely, then at least one part 
of the mystery, and perhaps the hardest and 
the darkest part, would be gone. And this it 
is that I think I have seen, and that I wish, 
if I can be so happy, to show to those who 
need it more than myself, and who better 
than myself may profit by it. 

Let me beg the patience of one class of 



The Mystery of Pain. 



sufferers, and their forbearance even, with 
some of the thoughts which are herein ad- 
dressed to another. No one, I think, can 
have had much intercourse with those who 
have been called upon to suffer, without feel- 
ing that there are two different ways in which 
their pains most heavily assault them. There 
are some in whom the fact that they and 
others are called on for endurance — even the 
endurance of unutterable pains — rouses no 
angry questionings, and excites no doubts. 
Their hearts may be bowed down to the 
earth, but they do not murmur ; they think 
it natural that the ways of God should be 
beyond mortal fathoming, and that what 
would seem best to our narrow vision could 
not be the truly good ; in their deepest 
agony, they do not question righteousness. 
But there are others — I think they are the 
more — the chief poignancy of whose suffer- 
ings comes from an irrepressible doubt cf 
right, a burning passion to penetrate the im- 
penetrable meaning of their anguish. They 
might gird themselves up to endure, but they 
cannot tolerate the unreason, the waste, the 



The Mystery of Pain. 



seeming wrong. Their souls, which might 
stand erect before the utterest tortures which 
right could demand, or reason could inflict, 
writhe in impotent passion in face of that 
cold, unanswering law which will spare no- 
thing, or that cruel caprice which lays its 
sacrilegious choice upon the best. What they 
demand is to see a right and purpose in the 
loss and wrong. 

It is a human cry, which surely God does 
not despise. Is it not, indeed, a faith ignorant 
of itself ? — an assurance that there must be in 
God's world a right, a perfect reason, which 
would not baulk our hearts or mock our 
hopes if we could know it ? Surely we ought 
not to be impatient of these demands, even 
when they are most impatiently urged. Those 
who do not feel them, or who have succeeded 
in hushing them within their own bosoms, 
may permit them to be weighed and pon- 
dered to the full for others' sakes. Perhaps, 
too, it may be found that these passionate 
questionings do not lead us altogether wrong ; 
that God's own Spirit may be prompting 
them, designing to meet them with an an- 



The Mystery of Pain. 



swer ; that they may be, though a faulty, yet 
an acceptable, fulfilling of the precept : "For 
this thing will I be inquired of, saith the 
Lord." Do not our Saviour's words encour- 
age us to seek knowledge as well as other 
gifts, when He says, " I call you not servants, 
but I have called you friends, for all things 
that I have heard of my Father I have made 
known unto you." 

If we knew all things that the Father does, 
would our hearts be consoled ? would our 
sorrows be turned into joy ? Does not the 
secret anticipation of the heart, in answer to 
this question, mark the distinction of the be- 
liever and the faithless ? I believe that by such 
knowledge sorrow would be turned into joy ; 
I think it may even be seen that it would ; that 
we may have a knowledge now that proves it. 
Accustomed as we have been to be in dark- 
ness, and to bear sorrow unassuaged (de- 
barred by loss and lapse from our privilege as 
Christian men,) have we not almost forgotten 
that the Spirit is the Comforter; that the 
gospel claims, as one of its chief ends, that we 
might have great consolation ; that God has 



The Mystery of Pain. 



undertaken Himself to wipe away all tears 
from His children's eyes ; and that Christ, 
foretelling tribulation, has bidden us be of 
good cheer ? 

Let us recall the joyful words ; let us as- 
sure ourselves that they do verily express the 
truth ; let us be bold to believe them, and, 
believing them, to look for and to welcome all 
agencies by which they are fulfilled. From 
whatever unexpected quarters, or quarters 
most threatening and hostile, there springs up 
consolation, may we not believingly recognise 
it as God's messenger, as His minister for ful- 
filling His word ? Himself not unwilling to 
do the consoler's part — nay, rejoicing most 
therein — shall we wonder that He bends all 
things to the same end, makes all results of 
human effort, all the long tale of human strife, 
His ministers, to do for Him His best and 
dearest work ; to give us joy, such joy as 
His ; to transmute our life, and make its dark 
threads translucent with the splendour of a 
glory like His own ? 

Can we wonder if all that man has known 
or done has been working together, unknown 



The Mystery of Pain. 



to him, indeed, but guided by God's hand, to 
this end : coming to us now as His ministers in 
our sore need, and bringing refreshing waters 
to us when we are thirsting unto death ? For 
surely never was the healing water needed 
more than now. Man has learnt many things, 
but he has not learnt how to avoid sorrow. 
Among his achievements the safeguard against 
wretchedness is wanting. Perhaps, indeed, he 
could scarcely be charged with exaggeration 
who should hold that the aggregate of man's 
unhappiness had increased with his increasing 
culture, and that the acuter sensibility and 
multiplied sources of distress more than out- 
weigh the larger area from which his plea- 
sures are drawn, and the more numerous means 
of alleviation at his command. At least, it 
appears certain that the heaping up of enjoy- 
ments, if ever it was designed as a means of 
producing happiness, has proved a signal fail- 
ure. When we regard the general tone of 
feeling of our age, whether as .expressed in 
its literature, in its social intercourse, or even 
more, perhaps, in its amusements, do we not 
find ourselves in presence of a society from 



8 The Mystery of Pain, 

which real gladness has well-nigh died out, in 
which hope is almost extinct ? I seem to be 
reminded of the attempt so often made, and 
proved fruitless just as often, by external 
pleasures and multiplied distractions to be- 
guile, or at least to quiet, a wounded heart. 
Man's heart is wounded in these latter days ; 
the bright dreams of his youth have vanished ; 
the outpouring of his deepest passion recoils 
on himself in mockery ; but he can attire him- 
self in gorgeous apparel, and fare sumptuously 
every day. He can lay all lands under con- 
tribution, and make Nature serve his pleasures ; 
he can even explore all knowledge — if he will 
abstain from asking any question that it truly 
concerns his manhood to have answered. But 
surely it is not now an open question whether 
pampered luxury or gratified curiosity can 
heal a wounded spirit. 

If happiness is to revisit the earth, or, if it 
have ever been a stranger there, is to be strange 
no longer, it must come in the form of a gen- 
uine joy of heart, a satisfaction of our highest 
nature. It must come surrounded with light, 
and bring hope in its train ; it must bid our 



The Mystery of Pain. 9 

largest and noblest affections spring up and 
blossom anew. It must visit us as spring 
visits the frozen lands, and make our life- 
blood flow again with a warm current in our 
veins. 

And there are thoughts which would do 
this ; thoughts which are possible to us now : 
in some sense, indeed, now first possible to us, 
though open to all men since Christ and His 
apostles preached. Old thoughts, and yet 
new ; as old as the gospel, yet taught us with 
fresh evidence and proof by the last discov- 
eries of science, which do but gather up the 
testimony of Nature to that good news, and 
bid us seek beyond the visible the secret of 
our life. 

It is true, indeed, that no change in our 
thoughts can alter the nature of things, or 
invert the essential relations of pleasure and 
pain. No form of opinion can make bitter 
sweet, or cause the couch of suffering to be a 
grateful rest. Yet let us observe what is true, 
on the other hand. It is in the power of 
knowledge very radically to determine our 
feelings, and sometimes to make the same 



io The Mystery of Pain. 

things in a high degree pleasurable, or the re- 
verse. Take, for example, the case of hypo- 
critical pretence of friendship, and designing 
arts to procure our favour. Ignorant of their 
nature, these pretensions (if not too gross) 
might be sources of gratification to us ; but 
the discovery of their true character makes 
them in the highest degree repulsive, nothing 
being altered but our knowledge. A similar 
effect may be produced in the opposite direc- 
tion : the apparent aversion or coldness of a 
beloved person may be turned into a source 
of joy, if it be discovered to depend upon a 
real regard. 

It is in the power, therefore, of the discovery 
of an unknown or unregarded fact to alter our 
feelings — even to invert their natural cha- 
racter ; to make unpleasing that which is na- 
turally pleasant, or to render in the highest 
measure joyful that which is naturally repug- 
nant. This power is in knowledge where there 
has been ignorance. It does not alter our 
natural emotions : it still leaves (as in the 
cases supposed) the manifestations of regard 
agreeable in themselves, and the tokens of 



The Mystery of Pain. 1 1 

aversion in themselves the source of pain ; 
but it can overrule these primary tendencies, 
eliciting feelings which are stronger within us 
than the sensational impressions. We may 
take another simple case : The loss of a small 
sum of money is a naturally painful thing ; 
few persons could avoid a distinct emotion of 
annoyance from its occurrence. But let a 
generous man discover that through that loss 
a dear friend has been largely benefited, and 
his feeling is entirely changed ; the vexation 
is lost in a stronger pleasure. 

It is therefore evident that knowledge might 
alter our whole feeling with respect to the 
world. The apparent good and evil of life 
constitute a case in which a truer understand- 
ing might invert the natural impression. We 
need not, therefore, be hopeless in presence 
of the problem of pain. Knowledge might 
alter its entire aspect. Nay, w T e are not 
limited to this general thought. For there is 
one condition under which all know that pain 
is not truly an evil, but a good. This is when 
pain is willingly borne for another's sake. Its 
entire character is altered then. It not only 



t 2 The Mystery of Pain. 

passes into the category of good things, but it 
becomes emphatically the good. Our life has 
nothing else so excellent to show. All kinds 
of pleasure fall infinitely below it. Measured 
by self-sacrifice, by heroism, every other good 
sinks not only into a lower place, but becomes 
evidently of a lower kind. Nothing else in 
the same full and perfect sense deserves or 
receives the name of good. The homage of 
all hearts unequivocally affirms this title. 
Even when there is not manhood enough to 
imitate, when the baser nature within us pre- 
fers the meaner course, the verdict of the soul 
is never doubtful. The pains of martyrs, or 
the losses of self-sacrificing devotion, are never 
classed among the evil things of the world. 
They are its bright places rather, the culmi- 
nating points at which humanity has displayed 
its true glory, and reached its perfect level. 
An irrepressible pride and gladness are the 
feelings they elicit : a pride which no regret 
can drown, a gladness no indignation over- 
power. Conceive all martyrdoms blotted out 
from the world's history ; how blank and bar- 
ren were the page ! 



The Mystery of Pain. 13 

There are the materials, then, evidently 
within us for an entire inversion of our attitude 
towards pain. The world in this respect, we 
might almost feel, seems to tremble on the 
balance. A touch might transform it wholly. 
One flash of light from the Unseen, one word 
spoken by God, might suffice to make the 
dark places bright, and wrap the sorrow- 
stricken heart of man in the wonder of an 
unutterable glory. 

If all pain might be seen in the light of 
martyrdom ; if the least and lowest in man's 
poor and puny life — or shall we rather say, in 
God's great universe — might be interpreted by 
its best and highest, were not the work done ? 
It is done : for the light has shone, the word 
is spoken, 



CHAPTER II. 

A BRIEF narrative of my thoughts may 
be allowed me, as the simplest method 
I can adopt of giving them expression. Some 
time ago, two feelings were forcibly impressed 
upon my mind. On the one hand, I was made 
conscious afresh of the evil that is in man's 
present state ; an evil deeply affecting his 
whole being, and demanding for its remedy 
nothing less than a reconstruction and restora- 
tion of his nature. And, on the other hand, I 
was scarcely less impressed with the evidence 
that there exists in all human experience 
something unseen, some fact beyond our con- 
sciousness, so that the seeming of our life is 
not the truth of it. 

Neither of these thoughts is new. They 
came with new force to my mind owing to 
particular lines of thought on which I was 
engaged, which presented them to me in fresh 
lights, and with new evidence, making old 
words burn with a new lustre ; but they are 



The Mystery of Pain. 15 

in themselves familiar truths. The radical 
need of a change in human nature has been 
affirmed by the best members of the human 
race, as long as history records the thoughts 
of men : with us it has become mixed up with 
theologic doctrines, and so has been made the 
subject of verbal disputes ; but it is itself an 
old and native feeling of the human heart. 

And the belief that there is an unseen fact 
beneath all that w r e are conscious of — that 
there is something unperceived by us which 
gives rise to all our experience — also is not 
new ; though it has lately taken a more dis- 
tinct form and place in the human mind. 

They are two old and customary thoughts ; 
but the freshness with which they appeared 
to me enabled me to see in them a relation 
which I had not perceived before. That 
which suggested itself to me was this : If 
man's nature needs a change, and there is 
some fact we are not conscious of causing 
our experience, then may not this fact be 
the working of that very change in man ? 

This thought assumed by degrees in my 
mind the character of an assured and manifest 



1 6 The Mystery of Pain. 

truth. It is the starting point from which the 
thoughts contained in this volume sprang : — 

Our experience is the working out of a 
change in man ; or, to speak in clearer and 
more familiar terms, it is the carrying out of 
man's redemption. 

It is clear that if this thought could 
be accepted as the truth, it would fulfil the 
conditions for a complete change in our 
thought of life. To connect all our experi- 
ence with such an end would enable us to 
read it entirely anew. For by giving to our 
pains a place of use and of necessity, not 
centred on ourselves, but extending to others, 
and indeed affecting others chiefly, as exist- 
ing for, and essential to, God's great work 
in the world ; — by giving to our painful ex- 
perience this place, its whole aspect would be 
altered. It would come within the sphere of 
that pain which is capable of being the instru- 
ment of joy ; which exhibits the highest good 
we can in our present state attain, — the pain, 
that is, of martyrdom and sacrifice. Nor are 
we left indeed to rest merely in this general 
thought : it comes to us realised in the highest 



The Mystery of Pain. 1 7 

form, and raises our souls to a height which 
might seem too awful and too full of joy. 
For so regarded, all our pains — all human 
pain and loss — identify themselves, in mean- 
ing and in end, with the sufferings of Christ. 
He stands as the Revealer to us of Human 
Life; and the emotions which His story 
awakens within us become the pattern of those 
with which all distress may be encountered 
and every loss accepted. 

And surely we may at least say this : If 
God would give us the best and greatest gift, 
that which above all others we might long for 
and aspire after, even though in despair, it is 
this that He must give us, the privilege He 
gave His Son, to be used and sacrificed for 
the best and greatest end. Nothing else could 
so fill our nature or satisfy our hearts as 
this ; that Christ's own life should be renewed, 
His work fulfilled in us ; that we should be 
united with Him so, and feel the wonderful 
words of St Paul true of our own poor and 
blank-seeming sorrows : " I fill up that which 
is behind of the afflictions of Christ, for His 
body's sake, which is the Church:" our suffer- 



1 8 The Mystery of Pain. 

ings being related to an end that is not merely 
ours ; an end that is of all ends the greatest 
and the best. 

For we are so made as to rejoice in others' 
good, to find in it, indeed, our highest joy, 
to rejoice, above all, in serving it. And if this 
thought of human life is true, we see that 
the gospel addresses man as constituted thus. 
Surely it should do so. If it came to us on 
any other ground, it would be addressing it- 
self not only to lower but to weaker elements 
within us. It would pass by the worthiest 
part of us, the part most kindred to itself. 
For with what light does the gospel come, 
what revelation does it make, but this, that 
God's highest joy is in others' good ? nay, 
that His great heart is impatient of their 
misery, and springs forward with an eager 
haste to take it on Himself, finding therein 
alone the means to make us know Him. 

When we look there, we can see why God 
is the blest, the happy Being. We should be 
happy if we had love, and found for it such a 
work ; if we might take the human sorrow, 
and bear it on our hearts, and give our lives, 



The Mystery of Pain. 1 9 

too, and our sorrows for the redemption of 
the world. If we might undertake that work, 
a small, the smallest, part of it, and live for 
that and die for it, that would be God's great- 
est gift to us. 

His best gift, then, would be, not in our 
pleasures but in our sorrows ; in our losses 
and evils, not in our possessions or delights. 
If this one fact of the use of our lives by God 
in the redemption of the world were true, the 
very foundations of our life would be changed, 
the current of our thought and feeling must 
pour itself through a new channel. 

The view, then, that I desire to suggest 
rests upon these two thoughts : that there is 
something accomplished in our experience 
which is unseen by us ; and that sacrifice for 
others is a good. For this unseen work that 
is done through us is something done for 
others. 

With this view I think we shall find here- 
after that both the facts of life and the consti- 
tution of our own nature so evidently agree 
as to give it the greatest possible confirmation. 
But I may first say a few words respecting 



20 The Mystery of Pain. 

the demand which is thus made upon us to 
recognise the existence of an unseen fact in 
all that we experience. 

It is evident that all the effects of the events 
with which we are concerned are not, and 
could not possibly be, perceived by us. We 
see and feel things — alike the great ones and 
the small ones, as we esteem them — only as 
they affect our senses ; that is, only in small 
part and for a short time. They soon pass 
beyond our sight, and while they are within 
it they never show us all they are, often those 
which are the greatest seeming to us the least. 
How little we are able, often, to calculate the 
influence even upon our own future of events 
or actions of which we seem to have the 
most perfect knowledge at the time. And of 
the effects of these events on others, which 
must go on, so far as we can estimate, with- 
out any end, only the smallest fragment is 
within our view. It is one of the first lessons 
taught men by experience, not to judge of 
events by what they seem, alone, but to re- 
member that there may be much more in- 
volved in them than appears. To judge of 



The Mystery of Pain. 2 1 

our life, therefore, merely by that which is 
seen of it, is to commit ourselves to certain 
error. 

So that the thought I have suggested, that 
in all our experience there is some unseen re- 
lation to spiritual things — to a spiritual work 
in man — makes on us no new demand. It is 
but the carrying out to their legitimate, and 
surely to their natural result, principles which 
experience has established. We shall be sure 
to be thinking and feeling falsely respecting 
our life, if we cannot recognise some unseen 
bearing of it. For we do not, we know we 
cannot, see the whole. 

And this principle is established not only 
by experience ; it is the lesson which, almost 
more than any other, science teaches us also. 
In exploring the material world, we soon find 
that, in order to understand any part of it 
aright, we must recognise things which are 
unseen, and have regard to conditions or to 
actions which do not come within our direct 
perception. It is enough to instance the pres- 
sure of the air, of which we have no con- 
sciousness, the motion of the earth, equally 
2 



22 The Mystery of Pain. 

unperceivable by us; the hidden force, lurk- 
ing in unseen atoms, of chemical affinity, or 
electricity ; the vibrations which traverse the 
universal ether ; and, in fine, that invisible, 
unity which makes all her forces one, where- 
by (holding to the unseen) man has traced 
out in nature a perfect order amid all con- 
fusion. 

So far we have learnt, that what we directly 
and naturally perceive in the things around 
us, and the events which happen to us, was 
never meant to be the guide to our thoughts 
respecting them. A chief part of the value 
of science, indeed, consists in bringing into 
our knowledge, and so into our practical use, 
that which is not within our consciousness, 
and which our senses can only indirectly, or 
even not at all, perceive. Scientific know- 
ledge consists in regarding the unseen ; in 
looking at things which are in one sense in- 
visible. It is therefore true, because it fulfils 
this evident condition for the attainment of 
the truth. 

And thus, when it is said that all human 
experience is the working out of the redemp- 



The Mystery of Pain. 23 

tion of the world, the restoration and perfect- 
ing of man's being, it is no difficulty in the 
way, or evidence to the contrary, that it is not 
visibly so. If this seem like a difficulty, it 
arises only from our natural tendency to limit 
our thoughts by our impressions, and so to 
condemn ourselves to error. That is the one 
source of error from which all advance in 
knowledge sets us free ; it is the one difficulty 
which obstructs the road to truth. Reference 
is made to an unseen fact. It should be so. 
If the fact were not unseen, it could not be 
the truth ; for it would not be freed from the 
limitations of our perception. This does but 
bring the thought into harmony with all our 
thoughts that we have just ground for be- 
lieving true. And if a certain effort is de- 
manded to free ourselves from the dominion 
of our own too small impressions, it is but the 
same effort which is, or has been, the condi- 
tion of all knowledge. But here the effort is 
not intellectual. We are not called upon by 
great stretch of thought to see relations in 
ordinary facts which no common eye can see. 
We are not bidden to follow causes to far 



24 The Mystery of Pain. 

distant and remote effects. The demand is 
not for a larger intellectual view, but for 
faith ; for that which is the common and 
inevitable basis of all religion, and is the 
foundation-stone of Christianity. We have 
to recognise a fact no human eye, indeed, can 
fully trace, but which God reveals. 



CHAPTER III 

A CONSIDERATION of the uses that 
pain visibly serves in human life may- 
add weight to the thoughts that have been 
suggested. For these uses, which have been 
often dwelt upon, are by far too limited, even 
if they were otherwise adapted, to give the 
key to its existence. Three uses of pain 
are recognised, and indeed cannot be over- 
looked : — 

I. Bodily pain prompts us to many actions 
which are necessary for the maintenance or 
security of life, and warns us against things 
that are hurtful It has been often pointed 
out how largely that which contributes to 
health is attended with pleasure, and how 
constantly the access or the causes of disease 
are accompanied by pain Cold and hunger, 
for example, lead us to feed and clothe our- 
selves, and when excess begins, there come 
satiety and disgust. 

These things are true, but they exhibit only 



26 The Mystery of Pain. 

one side of the facts. If pain is in these re- 
spects often beneficial, it is also often harmful ; 
and in almost all cases it is liable to exceed, 
in an immense degree, the amount which is 
needful to secure its beneficial influence. The 
pain of many diseases, by the exhaustion it 
produces, is one of the chief sources of their 
danger ; while in many cases, as in the abuse 
of intoxicating drinks, it wholly fails to indi- 
cate the most fatal perils. 

And not only is life, in many cases, crowded 
with useless or excessive pains, but our sensi- 
bility itself seems to be more developed for 
pain than for pleasure. Is not our power of 
suffering in excess of our power of enjoying ? 
Intense enjoyment can last but for a short 
time, and when once the limit of fatigue is 
reached, the pleasure itself may become a 
source of torture ; but pain may continue 
undiminished, even growing in severity, until 
life itself succumbs. 

Indeed, if we bring ourselves resolutely to 
look at all the facts, are we not almost com- 
pelled to feel that our nature — at least our 
bodily nature — is constituted rather for pain 



The Mystery of Pain. 27 

than for pleasure ? It is to the former that it 
vibrates, if not most readily, at least most in- 
tensely and most protractedly. Nor can we 
overlook here that strange law of our consti- 
tution by which a comparatively slight pain 
will spoil much happiness, and even turn what 
should be pleasure into bitterness. 

There is no adequate explanation, therefore, 
to be found of pain in the beneficial effects 
which it produces in respect to our physical 
existence. It serves these uses — is benevo- 
lently meant to serve them, doubtless, as our 
hearts irrepressibly affirm — but it exists inde- 
pendently of them. Its source lies deeper, and 
its ends are larger. 

2. But, secondly, pain serves as a punishment 
for sin ; it follows wrongdoing, in the forms of 
bodily disease or want, of mental anguish, or 
social vengeance. Suffering is the minister of 
justice. This is true in part, yet it also is in- 
adequate to explain the facts. Of all the sor- 
row which befalls humanity, how small a part 
falls upon the specially guilty ; how much 
seems rather to seek out the good ! Nights 
spent in dissipation bring ruined health ; 



2 8 The Mystery of Pain. 

nights spent in fond watchings by beds of 
pain bring a like and equal ruin. To what 
sufferings children are subject, and indeed all 
who are not able to protect themselves ! We 
might almost ask whether it is not weakness 
rather than wrong that is punished in this 
world ? 

Nor is there a wider basis for the idea that 
physical pain punishes the violation, not of 
moral, but of physical law. Not to speak of 
the cruelty which thus inflicts the last punish- 
ment upon the ignorant, and treats misfortune 
as a crime, the relation is itself as partial as 
the others. No violated physical law can be 
shown in destruction by storm or earthquake, 
or in the poverty which presses upon the 
weaker members of a thickly peopled coun- 
try. Pain avenges the majesty of violated law, 
physical and moral, but it does not exist for this. 

3. But there is another end which pain fulfils, 
a worthier and more satisfying one, perhaps, 
than either of those that have been mentioned. 
It disciplines and corrects the erring, chastens 
and subdues the proud, weans from false plea- 
sures, teaches true wisdom. 



The Mystery of Pain. 29 

Happily it does ; but only in some eases. 
Unhappily it more often fails to teach or to 
subdue. Often it hardens or perverts. Pain 
is used for a discipline, but can we say that 
it exists solely for that end when those to 
whom it is no blessing, but a curse, whom it 
rouses only to bitterness, or sinks merely into 
despair, have no exemption, and seem to plead 
in vain for pity ? Most often in this sad world 
pain works, to our eyes, evil, and not good ; 
and where it works no good, it often falls 
most heavily. Some other source and reason 
must be found for pain than the moral benefit 
it visibly brings the sufferer. 

And if neither of the uses we have thus 
observed in pain can even seem to furnish 
the reason for its existence, so neither can 
they when taken altogether. There are pains 
innumerable which benefit neither the body 
nor the soul ; which punish no moral wrong, 
which vindicate no material law against volun- 
tary breach. Take, for one instance, the suf- 
ferings of industry condemned to reluctant 
idleness, which lead so often to discontent 
and bitterness of heart 



30 The Mystery of Pain. 

All these we have enumerated are second- 
ary purposes served by pain. They do not 
conduct us to its source, nor reveal to us its 
meaning. Neither does the fact that the pro- 
gress of man and the development of his 
powers are prompted and maintained by the 
discomforts and evils which he feels. For 
pain often paralyses instead of stimulating, 
and reduces to impotence energies of the 
utmost value. 

We must, therefore, accept pain as a fact 
existing by a deep necessity, having its root 
in the essential order of the world. If we 
are to understand it, we must learn to look 
on it with different eyes. And does not a 
different ! thought suggest itself even while 
we recognise that the others fail ? For if 
the reason and the end of pain lie beyond 
the results that have been mentioned, then 
they lie beyond the individual. Pain, if it 
exist for any purpose, and have any end 
or use — and of this what sufferer can en- 
dure to doubt? — must have some purpose 
which extends beyond the interests of the 
person who is called upon to bear it. For 



The Mystery of Pain. 31 

the ends which have been mentioned include 
all that concerns the individual himself. That 
which surpasses these rises into a larger than 
the individual sphere. From this ground it 
becomes evident again that, to know the 
secret of our pains, we must look beyond 
ourselves. 

These uses of pain, which concern the one 
who suffers only, must fail and be found insuf- 
ficient ; they ought not to be enough, for they 
do not embrace that which is unseen. Con- 
fining ourselves to that which is visible to us, 
we ought to find ourselves in darkness, un- 
able to answer irrepressible questions. But 
when we extend our thought, and recognise 
not only that there are, in pain, ends unseen 
by us, but that these ends may not be con- 
fined within the circle of our own interests, 
surely a light begins to glimmer through the 
darkness. While we look only at that which 
directly concerns the individual who suffers, 
no real explanation of suffering, no satisfac- 
tion that truly satisfies, can be found. But if 
we may look beyond, and see in our own suf- 
ferings, and in the sufferings of all, something 



32 The Mystery of Pain. 

in which mankind also has a stake, then they 
are brought into a region in which the heart 
can deal with them and find them good. And 
if the heart, the reason also. For here it is the 
soul that is the judge ; and if the heart is 
satisfied, the reason also is content. 



CHAPTER IV. 

IT 7E have noticed before how love is cap- 
able in some degree of overruling our 
natural feelings of pain, and of making some 
things, that otherwise would be painful, a 
source of joy to ourselves, if they are produc- 
tive of benefit to others whom we delight to 
serve. When we look into this subject farther, 
we see that it is a law of our experience that 
our own mental condition controls and even 
alters our feelings. Though we speak of plea- 
sure and pain as fixed and definite things, 
yet they are truly by no means fixed. It is 
matter of familiar experience that various 
circumstances may modify our sensibility in 
respect to things which are, in our ordinary 
state, painful. The power of mental excite- 
ment in this respect is well known. A sol- 
dier wounded during battle may feel no im- 
mediate suffering from the severest injury; 
and we have everyday proof of the same 
thing in the failure of slight accidents to 



34 The Mystery of Pain. 

pain us when we are intently occupied. All 
strong emotions, indeed, seem to have a similar 
power. It can scarcely be doubted that mar- 
tyrs have sometimes gone through their flam- 
ing death in ecstasy. And the accounts we 
have of that fanatical sect in the East, one 
part of whose devotions consists in working 
themselves first into a frenzy, and then laying 
hold on glowing iron, dancing with it in their 
hands, and putting it to their lips, indicate not 
only an absence of pain in the act, but even 
some kind of pleasure. 

It would seem, indeed, that there is nothing 
that can be said to be always or necessarily a 
cause of pain. What we can truly say on this 
point is, that there are certain things which are 
painful to our bodily senses when these are not 
controlled or modified by the state of the mind. 
It is as truly our nature not to feel pain from 
the ordinarily painful things at some times, as 
it is to feel them painful at others. In this 
respect, the power of love to take away pain 
is not peculiar. Love, when it is strong, can 
banish pain ; but in this it is only like all 
strong emotions : it is peculiar in its power of 



The Mystery of Pain. 35 

making what is ordinarily painful a source of 
joy, and this a joy of the highest and most 
exquisite kind. We all know this. We not 
only are willing, we rejoice, to bear an ordin- 
arily painful thing for the benefit or pleasure 
of one whom we intensely love. Within cer- 
tain limits, indeed, but still most truly, the 
bearing pain for such an end is a privilege to 
be sought, not a sorrow to be shunned. Uni- 
versal experience proves this : it is one of the 
broad familiar features of human life. 

But when we consider this, do we not see 
that our natural feelings mislead us when they 
pronounce pleasant things to be the good ones, 
and the painful ones evil ? So far from this 
being the case, things that we call painful, 
that are painful in our ordinary state, are 
essential conditions of our highest good. To 
us, there could not be love without them. We 
could never have felt the joy, never have had 
even the idea, of love, if sacrifice had been 
impossible to us. In our truest and intensest 
happiness, that which is otherwise felt as pain 
is present. Pain, we may say, is latent, in our 
highest state. It lies hidden and unfelt in the 







6 The Mystery of Pain. 



form of devoted sacrifice ; but it is there, and 
it would make itself felt as pain if the love 
which finds joy in bearing it were absent. 
Take, for example, the offices rendered with 
joy by a mother to her babe : let the love be 
wanting, and what remains ? Not mere indif- 
ference, but vexation, labour, annoyance. A 
gladly-accepted pain is in the mother's love ; 
it is in all love that does not contradict the 
name. To take away from us the possibility 
of that which we feel as pain were to take its 
best part from life, to render it almost — surely 
altogether — worthless. The possibility of love 
is given to us in our power of sacrifice ; and lov- 
ing brings the power into immediate action. 

To beings constituted as we are the possi- 
bility of love can be given only through the 
power of sacrifice. Our highest happiness 
consists in the feeling that another's good is 
purchased by us, that we — our labour or our 
loss — are the instrument through which it is 
conferred. Take away that element, and the 
joy alters its character, and becomes inevitably 
less. We may still rejoice and be glad in the 
good fortune of the beloved object, but we 



The Mystery of Pain. 37 

can no more rejoice in giving it at our own 
expense. 

In our best happiness, then, what we other- 
wise term pain is swallowed up. It is embo- 
died and mixed up in the joy. For do we not 
despise and loathe a man whose only thought 
in that which he calls love is of the pleasure 
he can receive ? And further, by taking away 
the love, its sacrifices would be felt as pain : 
pain emerges, or comes out, from this joy by 
a taking away, or absence. And its presence, 
to one who should be loving, might imply no 
evil state around him, but only something 
wanting in himself. For the very same things 
may be to us either painful, or in the highest 
degree productive of delight, of a delight 
which could not be without them. 

Remembering these things, then, what 
should we consider the presence of pain in the 
world to mean ? Does it not mean that there is 
a want in man by which that becomes painful 
which should be joy ? Does it not mean that 
a world in which so much of pain is present, is 
adapted — was altogether made — to be the 
scene of an overpowering, an absorbing love ? 



38 The Mystery of Pain. 

One element of the best happiness is given, 
namely, sacrifice : what does it imply but that 
the other should be present too ? — the other, 
which is love. 

Let us think, then, of ourselves : our natural 
feeling prompts us to exclude all painful 
things ; to found a bliss upon their absence. 
But is not this an utter error, and were not its 
achievement fatal ? Surely a truer knowledge 
lays its fullest and intensest grasp upon the 
painful elements of life, and holds them as the 
fundamental conditions of its joy. The rea- 
son we are made, or seem as if we were made, 
for' pain, is that we are made for love; the 
predominance of sacrifice is a sign and proof 
upon how good a plan the world was formed ; 
upon how high a type of bliss. Our feeling 
it as pain, proves something wanting in our- 
selves. 

Doubtless we are right to loathe and repu- 
diate pain, and count its endurance an evil. 
To be happy is good : to feel pain is evil, and 
the sign of evil. God meant us for the one, 
meant us to abhor, and shrink from the other. 
But the question is, What is the happiness 



The Mystery of Pain. 



God has meant us for, the happiness to which 
human nature is fitted, to which it should 
aspire ? Should it be that from which the 
painful is banished, or that in which pain is 
latent ? Should pain be merely absent, or 
swallowed up in love and turned to joy ? 

Surely we can answer but in one way. To 
wish the former were to choose the lesser good, 
to cut ourselves off from our chief preroga- 
tive. If God truly loved man, must He not 
have made him such, that by want of love pain 
should arise ; and that to him — ignorant and 
unloving as he is — the world should be one 
dark mystery of sorrow? How else should 
He have made us capable of joy, how else 
have made earth tolerable in the eyes of hea- 
ven ? — in the eyes of that heaven which gazes 
on the Lamb that has been slain, and stes, un- 
amazed, in Him the brightness of the Father's 
glory, the express image of His person. 

For if in the only worthy joy (the only hap- 
piness which, matching the dignity of man or 
filling his capacity, rightly deserves the name 
of human,) if in this there is necessarily latent 
the element of pain, so that by an absence it 



4-0 The Mystery of Pain. 

must be felt ; — if in human joy pain is ab- 
sorbed and taken up, not merely excluded or 
set aside, then we at once rise in our thoughts 
above ourselves. If this is our joy, then it is 
His also in whose image we were made. The 
pain that is latent in man's bliss is latent, too, 
in God's ; in His most as He is highest : and 
that great life and death to which the eyes of 
men are ever turned, or wandering ever are 
recalled, reveals it to us. 

We see it must be so. If God would show 
us Himself, He must show us Himself as a 
sufferer, as taking what we call pain and loss. 
These are His portion; from eternity He chose 
them. The life Christ shows us is the eternal 
life. He emptied Himself, and the pain be- 
came manifest ; He put off His perfection, and 
the sorrow was hidden and lost in the fulness 
of His life no more. It was revealed as sor- 
row, becoming visible to human eyes ; pierc- 
ing the immortal heart before a breathless 
world, which, seeing Him, sees and knows the 
Father. 

Thus our own experience may solve for us 
the problem, how God is incapable of suffer- 



The Mystery of Pain. 4 1 

ing, and yet reveals Himself to us as a sufferer. 
The seeming contradiction here is only that 
which the intellect encounters in everything 
that is true of our own life. Love cannot be 
explained, made manifest of what nature it 
is, the secret of its happiness revealed, except 
by an exhibition of the toil, the abnegation, 
the sacrifice, that are in it. Seeking for hap- 
piness, craving for good, we grasp at pleasure 
and turn away from pain. God must teach 
as better, and to do so He shows us the root 
and basis of His own. Stripping off His in- 
finitude, and taking infirmity like ours, He 
bids us look and see ! The only happiness He 
has, or can bestow, bears martyrdom within 
it. If He does not suffer, it is only that His 
life is perfect ; His love has no hindrance, no 
shortcoming, and can turn all sacrifice to joy. 
He stands our great example, not exempting 
Himself from toils and sacrifices which He 
lays on us, binding heavy burdens, and griev- 
ous to be borne, upon men's shoulders, Him- 
self not touching one; but with so large a 
heart accepting them, that they are trans- 
figured into the very brightness of His glory, 



42 The Mystery of Pain. 

and our dim eyes cannot discern them, save 
as they are shown us with the brightness 
veiled, the glory banished, the love itself 
subdued to a less burning flame. Revealed 
therein in strong crying and tears, that recall 
our own experience to ourselves, He makes 
ms know with which part of it to link His 
name. It is sacrifice binds us to God, and 
makes us most like Him : sacrifice that to us 
is sorrow, wanting life and love ; but to Him, 
supreme in both, is joy. 

And when we say pain is an evil, we can 
only rightly mean that our feeling it to be pain 
is an evil. That marks defect and want, fail- 
ure of our prop^si manhood, shortcoming from 
our privilege of joy. From pain we may well 
seek and pray to be delivered ; but by what 
deliverance ? It may be banished in two 
ways — by taking away, or by adding. Pain 
may be removed passively by the removal of 
that which is its cause, letting us relapse into 
mere repose, which may seem joy by contrast, 
or by the deadening of the sensibility, that 
shall banish alike pain and pleasure. But it 
may also be removed actively, positively ; not 



The Mystery of Pain. 43 

by the absence of the cause nor by diminished 
feeling, but by a new and added power, which 
shall turn it into joy — a joy like God's. 

In the presence of pain the basis is laid of 
an exquisite delight ; should we not seek it ? 
Should we not believe that God will give it ? 
If the thought seems too great for us, is it not 
therefore more befitting Him, more like what 
we have learnt of Him ? And if He must 
new-create us in order to give us happiness 
like this, has He not promised to create us 
anew ? Nay, do we not find here confirmation 
of His promise, finding our need for its fulfil- 
ment ? 

Since love, then, is in sacrifi^, we see that 
to creatures such as we are, failing of our 
manhood, pain must be. We see that our 
Maker, assuming our condition in order that 
we may know Him, also assumes, and must 
assume, our sorrow, pre-eminent therein. We 
see, too, that deliverance from pain must be 
wrought out within : it must be by a change 
of life, and not of circumstance. However 
the latter may be altered, till love itself shall 
change this fact can never alter — that only in 



44 The Mystery of Pain. 

the form of that which we call sacrifice can 
our true good be given us. Whatever else 
may pass or change, of this we may be sure, 
that till God cease to love us we shall stand 
face to face with sacrifice. Of this, as of our 
Maker's presence, we may say, " If I ascend 
into heaven, thou art there : if I make my 
bed m Hades, behold, thou art there. If I 
take the wings of the morning, and dwell in 
the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall 
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me j" for where God is, there is love. 



CHAPTER V. 

; S~ A HESE thoughts have been made clearer 
to my own mind by some others which 
our common experience has suggested to me. 
My attention was first drawn to them in this 
connexion while engaged in gardening, and 
feeling how essential a part of the pleasure 
which that occupation gave was furnished by 
the slight inconveniences which it involved. 
Without the latter, I felt that the employ 
ment would have wanted very much of its 
zest. The little claim upon the endurance 
constituted a real part of the charm. As I 
became conscious of this fact, it was natural 
to go on to reflect how completely it seems 
to be a law of our nature, that, in order to be 
thoroughly enjoyable, and to continue so, our 
life must include more or less of willingly- 
accepted inconvenience. This inconvenience 
may be, in most cases, slight, but still (with 
some exceptions which I shall refer to pre- 

3 



46 The Mystery of Pain. 

sently) it seems to be in all cases necessary. 
There is inconvenience overcome, endurance 
accepted, to some extent, in every life that is 
permanently pleasurable ; and this, independ- 
ently of all moral considerations, merely by 
the nature of our constitution. We see this 
fact strikingly exhibited in field sports, and in 
every kind of active amusement. It reaches 
its height, perhaps, in the pleasure found now 
so widely in ascending mountains, which seems 
to be a really painful task ; but the same ele- 
ment is found almost universally in sports. 
Look at the roughness and fatigue of cricket, 
the toil, and even pain, of a hard day's boat- 
ing. Nay, how much less charm were there 
even in a pic-nic, if it were not for its incon- 
veniences and little denials. 

But these are only special instances of a 
law that seems to be universal in our experi- 
ence. Whether it may seem paradoxical or 
not, it is a fact in our nature that, without 
endurance, life ceases to be enjoyable ; with- 
out pains accepted, pleasure will not be per- 
manent. For the most part, among intelli- 
gent persons, this fact is so fully accepted and 



The Mystery of Pain. 47 

acted upon, that they are hardly conscious 
how universally it is true. They take their 
inconveniences, accept their little pains — let 
us say, for example, the rising at a reasonable 
hour in spite of sloth, or the free use of cold 
water in spite of the shock — and reap their 
reward accordingly in a healthful, pleasurable 
life. But the law becomes evident immedi- 
ately in its breach ; it asserts itself inevitably 
against the attempt to avoid it. A life from 
which everything that has in it the element of 
pain is banished, becomes a life not worth 
having ; or worse, of intolerable tedium and 
disgust. There is ample proof in the experi- 
ence of the foolish among the rich, that no 
course is more fatal to pleasure than to suc- 
ceed in putting aside everything that can call 
for endurance. The stronger and more gene- 
rous faculties of our nature, debarred from 
their true exercise, avenge themselves by 
poisoning and embittering all that remains. 
A striking illustration of this fact is given in 
the words reported to have been uttered by 
Lord Queensbury as he stood looking at the 
scene from Richmond Hill : — " Oh, that wea- 



48 The Mystery of Pain. 

risome river! it will keep running, running, 
and I so tired of it."* 

But the records of luxury in all ages fur- 
nish a long succession of similar instances. 
And the whole principle is embodied in the 
now universally recognised doctrine of the 
necessity of work — itself an irksome thing — ■ 
for happiness. 

This is the thought that occurred to me : 
In our healthful and natural life endurance 
is essential to pleasure. Our enjoyment, by 
the very construction of our nature, absorbs, 
and takes into itself as a necessary element, 
a certain amount of pain ; that is, of what 
would, if it stood by itself, be pain. But 
when we recognise this fact, we can hardly 
help remarking another also. The amount 
of endurance or pain that our pleasure will 
thus absorb, and turn into its own suste- 
nance, is not fixed. It varies, being in some 
cases more, and in some less ; and especially 
it varies with the intensity and perfectness 
of the life. A strong and healthy person 
can absorb into his pleasure a really large 

* Mrs Trench's Memoirs. 



The Mystery of Pain. 49 

amount of what would otherwise be pain, 
that of a hard day's hunting or rowing, or the 
ascent of a considerable mountain ; or he will 
enjoy a great amount of risk, as we read in 
the life of Stephenson, that the navvies in his 
day preferred the most dangerous tasks. A 
weak person can enjoy much less — fatigue or 
discomfort soon spoils his pleasure ; but a 
sick person, one in whom the bodily life is 
depraved or wanting in its perfectness, can 
enjoy none. His pleasure can absorb no en- 
durance at all. He must be shielded from all 
that is painful, from all that taxes, and to the 
strong man so delightfully taxes, the power 
to bear. The pains which are the very condi- 
tions of enjoyment to the healthy man, be- 
come to him intolerable, utterly unendurable 
and terrible. . He must be laid upon a soft 
bed, guarded from every shake or jar, from 
every call upon his powers, from all loud 
sounds, or brightness even of the light. He 
can find pleasure only in that which is itself 
unendurable to the healthy man, the absence 
of all exertion. 

For when we go on to consider the facts in 

D 



50 The Mystery of Pain. 

this connexion, we see that the sick man 
finds intolerable, not only that element in 
healthy pleasure which demands endurance, 
and might be regarded as in itself painful, 
but that every kind of action (speaking gene- 
rally) is painful to him. The natural exer- 
cise of the powers, which is the very source 
of healthy pleasure, is his agony. His whole 
feeling is inverted ; that which is properly 
pleasure, and ought to be pleasure to him, is 
become his torment, and no effort can ren- 
der it otherwise. 

Accordingly, in all our dealings with a sick 
man, and in all his thoughts respecting him- 
self if he is capable of thinking truly, this 
inversion of his natural condition is recog- 
nised. It is remembered that what is pro- 
perly pleasurable is painful to him, and that 
his pleasures are in things that should be to 
him worse than indifferent. When he is pro- 
mised perfect enjoyment, he does not look 
forward to the perfecting of the kind of plea- 
sure which he needs in his sickness, or of the 
ease which he then desires ; not to perfect 
rest, to beds so soft that his limbs cannot ache 



The Mystery of Pain. 5 1 



upon them, or food that shall nourish with no 
demand upon the vital energy. He looks for- 
ward to a change in his own capacities where- 
by his enjoyment shall be made different. 

In being promised ease, he is promised 
health; that is, to be able to find enjoyment, 
the true enjoyment of a man, in that which 
is pain to him, it may be intolerable and over- 
whelming pain ; in exertion and endurance. 
He is to be delivered, by an increase or per- 
fecting of his life, from pain, but by no means 
from all the things he feels as painful. The 
only possible condition of a true enjoyment is, 
that he shall find it in things that to him are 
painful ; his only true deliverance is in an 
added power. 

Now this thought, which sprang so natu- 
rally from our every-day experience, connected 
itself at once with the thoughts that have pre- 
ceded. Is not man sick, falling short of his 
perfect life, and therefore feeling as pain that 
which is the rightful condition of his joy ? 

It is true, mankind are subject to pains, of 
body and of mind, which oftentimes are over- 
whelming, utterly beyond endurance, which 



52 The Mystery of Pain. 

no effort, no philosophy, can render otherwise 
than insupportable. The woes which sur- 
round human life often seem as if they could 
not be exaggerated ; they seem to admit of 
no consolation, no alleviation. We cannot 
rejoice in them ; we cannot rise above them. 
They penetrate our very hearts, and under- 
mine the very sources of our strength. But 
though all this is true — though human misery 
is immense — -it does not follow that the whole 
of it is not rightly the instrument and source 
of happiness. We see, in bodily disease, that 
our feeling certain things utterly and intole- 
rably painful, may arise not from evil in the 
things themselves, but from want of a perfect 
life in us ; they may be the very conditions of 
natural and healthful pleasure. 

And if we accept the thought of man as 
sick, does not the whole fact of human wretch- 
edness, the heavy total of the pains of men, 
stand before us in this new light ? Do we not 
receive (a joyful gift) a perfect inversion of our 
thought respecting it ? All pains may be 
summed up in sacrifice ; and sacrifice is — of 
course it is — the instrument of joy. To health, 



The Mystery of Pain. 53 

to life, it is so. If it is not so to us, what 
does that mean, but that we are sick ? 

Man's life, his true and proper life, his 
health, is of such grandeur, of such intensity 
and scope, that it would absorb, and turn into 
the servitors of its joy, all that we now find 
intolerable pain, all agony and loss. Man's 
life is measured by his pains. It is such life, 
so large, so deep in consciousness, so rich in 
love, that in these sacrifices it can find its joy, 
its perfect satisfactions, its delights. These 
utter losses, and unfathomable miseries, and 
cruel strokes that leave us nothing, are its 
pleasurable efforts, its rejoicing gifts, its glad 
activities. So far short we fall ; and so vast 
and glorious is the true human life. To ap- 
prehend it we must measure it by its pains, 
that is, by its capability of sacrifice. Man's 
being is cast on that scale, planned to that 
magnitude ; it claims that intensity : a scope 
and an intensity that should make the utter- 
most evil and sacrifice to the self — intolerable 
evils to us now — but as the healthful exercise, 
the hearty toil, that make the limbs throb 
with exuberance of life. 



54 The Mystery of Pain. 



-So glorious is man's true being ; so high we 
should elevate our hopes. The life we shall 
receive is such as would make all sacrifices 
joy, even those extremest ones from which 
now we shrink most utterly. These things 
God hath prepared for them that love Him. 
It is true the height staggers our thought, 
and almost forbids our faith. Yet why should 
we shrink from it ? Are we not to be joined 
with Christ in His glory ; and is any height 
of joy in sacrifice, of power to give and to be 
glad in giving, too great for Him ? 

And surely this thought of man's greatness 
is only like those new thoughts of greatness 
which the study of God's works everywhere 
enforces on us. Not less than immeasurably 
short of the reality fall all our natural thoughts 
of the Creator's works ; as in respect to nature, 
so also in respect to man. He, too, is unut- 
terably greater than we believed, unutterably 
greater than we can conceive. But then God 
made him ; how, therefore, can any thought 
be too high or glad ? Man's perfect life 
could use all suffering for joy; that is, a 
love for others should be so powerful within 



The Mystery of Pain. 55 

us, and a consciousness of other's good should 
be so fully ours, such rapture should possess 
us, that all loss, all griefs, should be to us the 
trivial sacrifices which love delights to have 
the opportunity to make. That they are not 
so now reveals the condition of the sick man, 
who needs, not ease or pleasure from without, 
but health within. 

The evil of our pains should make us say, 
not how evil is this that we are called upon to 
bear, but how far short we fall — man falls — of 
the true human life, that this sacrifice is an evil 
to us. It should prompt us to seek deliverance^ 
but deliverance by cure : the deliverance that 
is brought by a perfected life ; the joy that is 
the joy of love, and finds its necessary food in 
sacrifice. Any other thought of happiness, 
any other anticipation or desire, any antici- 
pation that puts aside the sacrifice, is as if a 
sick man should desire, not restoration, not the 
power of enjoying effort and absorbing endur- 
ance into pleasure, but only soft and easy 
couches, rest and shaded light. This is to fall 
short in our desires, to make disease our mea- 
sure, to demand a life that is not life, plea- 



56 The Mystery of Pain. 

sures that are not truly pleasure. Must we 
not aspire higher ? Must we not seek, desire, 
anticipate a happiness that is in giving ; a life 
that is so wide, and high, and full, that it can 
take up, nay, must take up, all that is utterest 
sacrifice to us, and make it the very condition 
of its rejoicing energy ? — a life to which it 
would be as impossible to use our poor self- 
pleasures, except for sacrifice, as it would be 
to health to lead the life of sickness. 

The whole thought is involved in the fact, 
that devotedness and self-giving are the con- 
ditions of the joy of love ; and that without 
love the life that love leads joyfully were full 
of pain. Man's perfect life is a life in which 
love can be perfect, and find no limitation ; 
it is a life so truly lived in others, so partici- 
pant with them, that utter and unbounded 
sacrifice is possible ; the limitations of this 
mortal state bounding us no more. It is the 
life of heaven. But the thought need not be 
left vague. Do not the words of Scripture, 
which speak of the union into oneness of those 
who constitute the Church of Christ, supply to 
it a definite basis ? Are we not to share a life 



The Mystery of Pain. 57 

wider and deeper than we now seem to pos- 
sess ; a life co-extensive with Christ's body, in 
the great joy of which all loss and sacrifice of 
self is swallowed up ; the self remaining to us, 
indeed, only as purified and ennobled into the 
means of sacrifice ?* 

Is not this, then, the standard of human 
life ? Such life as would make all the bitter 
pains, the unutterable losses and overpowering 
agonies of man, the means of a glad service, 
the rejoicing offerings of love ? We must 
reckon, not the pains too great, but our life 
marred. It is not dark, but the brightness of 
a day that overwhelms our fevered eye. But 
make us whole, and joy will banish pain. 

* If this idea should seem obscure, it may be sufficient to 
recall to our thoughts the representations given in Scripture 
of the Divine Being, as dwelling, and acting, and living in 
the creatures whom He regenerates. 



CHAPTER VI. 

'E can return now to the subject which 
forms the foundation of the thoughts 
that have been expressed ; namely, the re- 
demption of man. If we recognise a want 
in our own nature, a condition like that of 
disease, making us feel pain in that which 
should be joyful, we feel at once that we 
have need of a deliverance, need of a cure. 
And seeing that this condition of want or 
disease affects not individuals only, but the 
whole human race, we feel that MAN needs 
a restoration, a perfecting of his life. Man's 
nature, appearing as diseased, claims a re- 
storer ; appearing as the victim of a perverted 
feeling, which subjects it to evil, it needs to 
be redeemed from this. 

Now this is the thought to which reference 
has been made in the idea of the redemption 
of the world. That redemption is the raising 
up of man from the evil condition in which he 
feels sacrifice as pain, into a condition in 



The Mystery of Pain. 59 

which it is felt as joy, a condition of true 
and perfect life. 

Thus the idea stands in a definite light be- 
fore us. This is the change which man's 
nature needs : this is the change which it is 
receiving. The redemption of man, as I have 
spoken or shall speak of it here, means this 
change ; a change not only of his feelings and 
will, but of his actual state. I seek to regard 
all our experience in its relation to this work ; 
in the part which they bear in it I find the 
glory of our pains and the consolation of our 
griefs. 

For if this work is being done, it is neces- 
sarily being done in all human experience ; 
or rather, this experience of ours is that very 
work itself. Strange and unlike it as they 
may appear, these events which bring us joy 
or sorrow, perplexity or pleasure, gain or loss ; 
these things in which we are actively engaged, 
or which are passively inflicted on us ; these 
are the carrying out of this work in man. So 
that we may take up each one of our pains 
and sorrows, and say, "Man's redemption is 
carried out in this, is effected through it, de- 



60 The Mystery of Pain. 

mands this to be." It is no matter that it is 
so disconnected, so useless, so utterly insigni- 
ficant. Nothing is disconnected ; nothing that 
moves man's spirit and rouses his capacity of 
feeling is insignificant ; nothing that is linked 
— as all events are linked — inseparably into 
the great history of man, is useless. If man's 
redemption is a fact, it is the fact of these 
experiences that may seem so small and ob- 
jectless ; the unseen fact of them, they seem- 
ing small only because it is unseen. 

The evidence that this work is accomplished 
is drawn, of course, from the declarations of 
Scripture, which affirm a salvation bestowed 
on man, and to be wrought out in him ; which 
promise that he shall be made alive in Christ, 
and receive an eternal life. And here I may 
briefly say that to my own mind the language 
of the New Testament appears unequivocally 
to affirm the redemption of all men ; their 
actual redemption from this evil and diseased 
state in which we now are ; the actual rais- 
ing up of all to a perfect life. To my own 
mind this universality seems to be clearly ex- 
pressed in Scripture, and to give an unutter- 



The Mystery of Pain. 6 1 

able delight to life. But it is not necessary 
that this should be believed in order for us to 
receive the happiness which the knowledge 
that our sufferings serve their part in the great 
work of redemption gives. That happiness 
may still rest upon their serving the good of 
others, though not all may share that good. 
In the words before-quoted, St Paul says, " I 
fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ for his body's sake, which is the church." 
He does not say in this passage, as in so 
many others he at least appears to say, that 
the sphere of Christ's Church shall finally 
include the whole human race. And the 
happiness which flows from this thought may 
be shared by those who can believe it true of 
their own sufferings, even though they think 
that those on whose behalf God uses them are 
but a part and not the whole of men. 

On this point I may venture one remark. 
It seems to me that great difficulties have 
been rightly felt in recognising in 'the lan- 
guage of Scripture any clear assertion that 
all men shall be brought to Christ, and spirit- 
ually made alive through Him. There is 



6 2 The Mystery of Pain. 

much which, with thoughts such as ours have 
been, seems very expressly to affirm the con- 
trary. But it appears to me that a chief 
source of these difficulties has been our own 
corruption. As we are now, we feel, and can- 
not help feeling, that of the two evils, pain 
and sin, pain, if it be extreme, is the greater. 
By nature we fear suffering more than sinning. 
Now, reading the New Testament with this 
feeling operating on our thoughts — as we are 
sure to do unless we are expressly on our 
guard against it — we can hardly fail to mis- 
understand its language, and to think of suf- 
fering or loss where it speaks of sin. So 
reading it, we may well see in its words mere 
hopeless ruin as the destiny of a large part of 
men. But if we keep watch over ourselves 
here, and remember that only he whose very 
life is death can feel suffering worse than sin, 
or could speak as if it were ; if we remember 
that God's chief warnings, therefore, must be 
against, not what we fear most, but against 
that which, perhaps, we do not fear at all, the 
words of the New Testament present them- 
selves to us in a new light And the apparent 



The Mystery of Pain. 63 



meaning of many passages that we may easily 
recall, which speak as if Christ's kingdom 
were to embrace each member of the human 
race, telling us that He will draw all men 
to Him ; that every knee shall bow in His 
name ; that God shall be all in all ; — the ap- 
parent meaning of these passages may grow 
clear to our purged eyes as the true burden 
of the gospel. We may be able, giving an 
awful force to all its threatenings, to take to 
our gladdened hearts — our hearts made warm 
with a new life — its large and joyful words, 
which speak of a salvation achieved for all, 
in all to be fulfilled ; a salvation of which 
one chief and most essential part consists in 
the very remedy of this perverted feeling. 
For when man finds only joy in sacrifice, 
there can no more be any evil felt by him as 
worse than sin. Sin, indeed, would stand as 
the one sole evil felt or capable of being felt 
by him, and in this would not his redemption 
be fulfilled ? 

But while the belief that a redemption, a 
new creation of his nature, is being worked 
out in man, rests primarily and essentially on 



64 The Mystery of Pain. 

the New Testament, yet it has other evidences 
which may well add strength to our convic- 
tion. True, it is a work that is unseen, a fact 
that cannot be made visible to the eye of 
sense, a fact which, save for its revelation in 
Christ, could not have been discovered. Yet 
evidences of it may be found in many facts. 
Surely in the very constitution of our nature, 
made as it is for sacrifice, constructed to find 
its chief joy only there, feeling, even in its 
degradation, that no other joys are fully 
worthy of it, proof is given that man is 
designed and destined for a life proportioned 
to his powers. 

And do not the very pain and loss by 
which man is surrounded, if we read them 
rightly, testify to the same thing ? Not acci- 
dentally, not arbitrarily, do these assail him. 
They are rooted in the essential conditions of 
his being ; they are inseparable from the struc- 
ture of the world, and the relations which he 
bears to it. The individual must be sacrificed 
and suffer loss. It is his inevitable lot ; the 
total order of nature must be altered ere he 
could escape it. The necessity for sacrifice is 



The Mystery of Pain. 



built into the structure of our being ; it is the 
birthright, the inalienable inheritance of life. 
What, then, can we say of it, but that it fore- 
tells and promises a state of being and a 
mode of life to which it shall not be alien 
and hostile ; a life in which it shall exist as 
a kindred and friendly element, and to the 
fulness of which it shall be minister, as we 
know it may be. Must not the inevitable 
existence of pain and loss, to us, mean this ? 
'And human history, when it is closely 
scanned, confirms the thought. Dark and 
unmeaning as it looks, this at least is visible 
in it, that without sacrifice no permanent 
satisfaction or truly good result is suffered to 
be attained. Incessantly man aims at ends 
which do not involve self-abandonment; in- 
cessantly they are denied to him; or, when 
gained, deceive his hope. Satisfaction is with- 
held ; the best founded hopes prove vain ; the 
highest powers fail ; experiments, on which 
the brightest expectations have been founded, 
fall in ruin ; no lesser end suffices ; but, by 
failure and discontent, man is driven ever on- 
ward. If we ask ourselves, To what goal? 



66 The Mystery of Pain. 

can we not well foresee the answer ? He Is 
driven onward to this : to accept loving sacri- 
fice as his good. 

These facts are evident in human life even 
as it is : that man is framed for joy in sacri- 
fice; that until it can be made his joy, sacrifice 
must be his torment, for it never can be ban- 
ished ; that without the willing acceptance of 
sacrifice, no end is really answered in human 
life, no satisfaction that is worthy of humanity 
achieved. Add to these things the known 
fact that our nature is imperfect, and the pro- 
mise given of its renovation, and does not 
their meaning become manifest ? — that man's 
redemption is the end for which this present 
human life exists, the unseen end which it 
achieves. 



CHAPTER VII.* 

FF we recognise that our feeling in respect 
to sacrifice is inverted, and, as in sick- 
ness, the very condition of our rightful joy is 
become the source of pain, we see that our 
thought has also been perverted ; we have 
judged of good and evil falsely. And thus 
does not light arise upon us, a light in which 
we cannot but rejoice? Do not two mysteries 
disappear : the mystery that God reveals 
Himself in Christ, taking suffering and death 
to show Himself to us ; and the mystery of 
the pain and sorrow of which our life is full ? 
Seeing what God's joy is, we see why Christ " 
alone can reveal Him. The nature of the joy 
that is in love cannot otherwise be shown than 
in taking sacrifice, and bearing sorrow. To 
reveal God there must have been presented 

* This chapter is partly a recapitulation. 



68 The Mystery of Pain. 

to our eyes a Man of Sorrows, who chose and 
willingly embraced our griefs ; for we feel 
that to be sorrow which is the very basis of 
His life and blessedness. 

Nor could our human life be otherwise than 
full of sorrow too. We are dealt with — most 
happy those who most are dealt with so — 
according to the nature of our manhood, not 
according to our false feeling of it ; according 
to the true good, not according to our per- 
verted desires. Our good is secured in the 
felt loss ; for our nature is larger than we feel : 
our ends are most subserved when most we 
feel them set at naught, for our destiny is 
higher than we know. The best is given us, 
though we would choose the worse : the basis 
of the largest and highest happiness, though 
we would choose the lower and the less. We 
are sacrificed, unwilling, for others' good, un- 
seen : but it is no mystery that we are so ; 
because in willing sacrifice for others' good, 
known, seen, and felt even as His own, lies 
God's own blessedness ; the blessedness of al 
who truly can be blest. The broken remnants 
of the perfect life of joy are these : these pains, 



The Mystery of Pain. 69 

these multiplied and dire distresses, these 
clouds which to us veil the heavens in despair. 
Nor are they remnants only ; they are germs 
from which the perfect life may grow ; they 
are the omens of victory and delight ; the 
basis upon which is to be built up a joy for 
which they cannot be too great. Of all 
that could not be spared from our life, our 
sacrifice is that which could be spared the 
least. 

And that there is a perversion of man's 
feelings and desires, a radical want in our na- 
ture, is a known fact, proved long ago, and 
resting on evidence which needs no fresh con- 
firmation. The disease of humanity has writ- 
ten its proofs on every page of history, has 
engraved itself indelibly on the human heart. 
The fact is already known, and we are jus- 
tified therefore in using it to guide us. 
For his full life and happiness, man must be 
changed : we know it well. Surely, then, this 
change, to which we must look forward, may 
be one that shall make sacrifice his joy. Nay, 
for his perfect holiness and bliss, it must be 
so. For unless sacrifice is joy, holiness beyond 



7o The Mystery of Pain. 

temptation, and happiness without a sorrow, 
cannot be. 

But if it thus proves itself to the reason that 
pain is sacrifice, and is good felt as evil through 
disease, it proves itself still more to the heart. 
Nothing can make pain so good as that it 
should be borne for others. So it becomes a 
privilege. And this is the inevitable demand of 
the human heart when it seeks for consolation. 
Even the natural feelings of men, unaided by 
that revelation of life which shows us this 
consecrated sorrow as its central fact, have 
often risen to confidence in the belief, and to 
happiness and strength based on it. The 
thought is beautifully expressed in the fol- 
lowing passage by the Emperor Marcus An- 
toninus, showing that even in darkness and 
insufficiency, it is yet native to the soul : — 

" Just as we must understand when it is 
said, that ^Esculapius prescribed to this man 
horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water, or 
going without shoes ; so we must understand 
it when it is said, that the nature of the uni- 
verse prescribed to this man disease or muti- 
lation, or loss, or anything of the kind. For, 



The Mystery of ' Pam. 71 

in the first place, > prescribed' means some- 
thing like this : he prescribed this for this man 
as a thing adapted to procure health ; and, in 
the second case, it means, that which happens 
to (suits) every man is fixed in a manner for 
him suitably to his destiny. For this is what 
we mean when we say that things are suitable 
to us, as the workmen say of the squared 
stones in walls or the pyramids, that they are 
suitable when they fit one into another in some 
kind of connexion. For there is altogether 
one fitness (or harmony.) And as the uni- 
verse is made up out of all bodies to be such 
a body as it is, so out of all existing causes 
necessity (destiny) is made up to be such as it 
is. And even those who are completely igno- 
rant understand what I mean, for they say, It 
(necessity, destiny) brought this to such a per- 
son. This, then, was brought, and this was 
prescribed to him. Let us, then, receive these 
things, as well as those which ^Esculapius pre- 
scribes. Many, as a matter of course, even 
among his prescriptions, are disagreeable, but 
we accept them in hope of health. Let the 
perfecting and accomplishment of the things 



72 The Mystery of Pain. 

which the common nature judges to be good, 
be judged by thee to be of the same kind as 
thy health. And so accept everything that hap- 
pens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it 
leads to this, to the health of the universe, and 
to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus (the uni- 
verse.) For he would not have brought on any 
man what he has brought, if it were not use- 
ful for the whole. Neither does the nature of 
anything, whatever it may be, cause anything 
which is not suitable to that which is" directed 
by it. For two reasons, then, it is right to be 
contented with that which happens to thee ; 
the one because it was done for thee, and pre- 
scribed for thee, and, in a manner, had refer- 
ence to thee, originally from the most ancient 
causes spun with thy destiny ; and the other, 
because even that which comes severally to 
any man is to the power which administers 
the universe a cause of felicity and perfection, 
nay, even of its continuance. For the integrity 
of the whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off 
anything whatever from the conjunction, and 
the continuity either of the parts or of the 
causes. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is 



The Mystery of Pain. J 3 

in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and 
in a manner triest to put anything out of the 
way. * 

And this feeling that the true consolation 
in distress must be found in its use and sub- 
servience to others' good, breaks out in a more 
exquisite and Christian form in Milton's poem 
on his blindness. Having heaped up the 
description of its distresses and privations, he 
turns, for his rejoicing in it, to this thought, 
and this only : — 

" They also serve who only stand and wait." 

And if they who stand and wait, do not those 
who suffer too ? Is it conceivable that God 
should give to some, whom He blesses with 
health and vigour and large gifts of influence, 
the privilege of greatly serving Him, of doing 
a wide work of use for others ; and that this 
privilege, which none else can equal or sup- 
ply, He withholds from others from whom 
He takes health and strength, and every gift 
but that of suffering ? Does He give the one 

* "The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus:" 
translated by George Long, p. 6$. 



74 The Mystery of Pain. 

the blessedness of serving, and refuse it to the 
other ? " Behold, my ways are equal, saith 
the Lord." 

If our life were ordained to be good, truly, 
satisfyingly good, it could be made so only in 
one way. It must be a life of sacrifice, for 
all other goods fall short — we know they fall 
infinitely short — of this ; and it must be sac- 
rifice for unseen ends, because the best ends 
must be unseen by us. To be the best, our 
life must be sacrifice, and for ends unseen. 
It must be, therefore, to us, just what our life 
is. Must we not believe, then, that our life is 
this : the best ? 

In its fruitless-seeming pains and failures, 
it fulfils the conditions of being the best life, 
of presenting the highest form of good, and of 
being turned to the best ends. It is this God 
calls upon us to believe ; this is a demand 
He makes for faith, showing us, to justify and 
confirm it, a life, like our own, of sorrow and 
humiliation ; or if in this unlike our own, un- 
like only because the sorrow was greater, and 
the humiliation more profound ; a life of sor- 
row in which the meaning and the end are no 



The Mystery of Pain. 75 

more concealed, but made manifest to all. 
Revealing so the secret of our life, He calls 
on us for faith. 

And so the pain of life is made good — all 
its pain ; not indeed to our sensuous feeling, 
but to that deeper feeling which rules and 
subordinates the other. This faith has power 
to make pain good ; to make us place above 
all price that which we most should shrink 
from. Only let the love be strong enough, 
and pain cannot be too great, nor loss too 
absolute. 

And therefore, feeling that the heart here 
becomes the judge (the reason having given 
its assent,) appealing to the heart, to that 
moral feeling on which the existence of God 
Himself rests firm in man's belief, have we not 
answer, distinct and clear, that pain must be 
sacrifice ; a privilege, and not a loss ? Does 
not the thought, once seen to be possible, 
affirm itself as necessary, and refuse to be 
held in doubt ? Does it not link itself with 
the belief in God, so that we are compelled 
to say, that if God is, then pain is sacrifice 
— sacrifice for man ? For if we think other- 



j 6 The Mystery of Pain. 

wise, then do we not choose to join evil with 
His name ? Not to believe our pains serve 
others' good, and are the fact of man's re- 
demption, is but to disbelieve in God. It is 
to doubt His goodness, and contradict the 
very evidence on which we assert His being. 
Once recognised in its true meaning, the 
thought ceases to be a question of argument 
and balanced evidence ; it sinks into the soul, 
and becomes part of that deep conviction on 
which all religion rests. Pain cannot be inter- 
preted otherwise than thus, when once we see 
that it can be thus interpreted. The heart 
rises up from its chains and rejoices. God 
has revealed Himself; He has manifested joy, 
and we see it and are glad. Amid our tears 
we smile, for when our woes are deepest, then 
our joys are highest. Then we are likest 
Him, are nearest to the dignity of manhood ; 
partakers most in that on which all living joy 
is based, needing only that our life be per- 
fected to make it joy. 

We seek to be delivered from pain and 
sorrow, and God designs to deliver us. Vainly 
we seek, but He accomplishes. Our end is 



The Mystery of Pain. 77 

not mistaken, but we mistake the means. 
We seek deliverance by taking away ; He 
gives deliverance by adding ; 

" 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want ;" 

and God our Father, who knows our disease 
and provides the remedy, leads us also to see 
our need of it. 

Surely it is not hard thus to turn and keep 
our thoughts, recognising our own too narrow 
life, and our too contracted heart therewith, 
that makes us seek a good too small, and be 
too easily content ; that gives us a content 
which cannot be undisturbed, desires which 
God cannot gratify, because that would be to 
curse instead of blessing ; to curse instead of 
blessing him for whom He has ordained the 
highest blessedness. Surely it is not hard to 
be on our guard against ourselves, and to 
remember that our wanting and enfeebled 
nature misleads us, makes us grasp at reme- 
dies that are no remedies, at goods that are 
too small and pitiful for human good ; — not 
hard to aspire after more, and feel that our 



78 The Mystery of Pain. 

only joy must be in that which we already 
know as the highest and the best. Surely we 
can learn to shape our prayer for health, not 
for alleviations ; for power to enjoy the good, 
not for the false goods our sickness can enjoy ; 
for power to rise up from man's false thought 
to God's true. 

When, as reward, the prospect of our future 
grows into infinite glory, the thought of human 
nature rises into an elevation unconceived ; 
God appears before us infinite afresh in ten- 
derness ; and the darkness of human sorrow, 
all the sad failure and agony of life, shining 
with the brightness of Christ's own sacrifice, 
are changed into the instruments and prophe- 
cies of joy. 

Surely it is not hard to think ; — not, I want 
self-good to make me happy ; but, I want life 
to make sacrifice my joy ! And thus there 
is no mystery in pain. The world were an 
utter and hopeless mystery if pain were not. 
Where, then, would be the basis and the root 
of love, the prophecy of an enlarged and an 
ennobled nature ? where the revelation of our 
life in Christ ? 



The Mystery of Pain. 79 

But there are some difficulties that will 
probably suggest themselves in respect to this 
thought. Two of these especially demand 
notice. 

1. It may be felt that there can be no satis- 
factory treatment of the question of pain 
without a reference to sin. Is not sin the 
radical cause of all other evil, and without it 
would not man have had an entire immunity 
from suffering ? 

2. If we receive the thought that sacrifice is 
itself a good, and that painful things truly are 
the best, will it not lead us to voluntary 
choice and preference of pain to pleasure? 
In a word, would it not re-establish the long- 
disproved theory of asceticism ? 

In reference to the first of these questions 
very few words are required. So far from 
the connexion of pain with sin being called 
in question by the view that has been given, 
it is emphatically asserted. The whole 
thought consists in tracing out how pain 
arises and must arise from sin. From sin 
comes that diseased and wanting state of 
man whereby alone pain can be felt. With- 



80 The Mystery of Pain. 

out sin pain had not been ; for there had 
not been that perversion of feeling, and 
lack of life, whereby sacrifice is felt as pain. 
Pain is from sin, but sacrifice is not. The 
conditions of good and of happiness are not 
altered by it. These ever were to be found 
in sacrifice, and ever must be. Therefore it 
is that where sin has entered, and death by 
sin, pain must be. 

And if it should be asked, How, then, did 
Christ become subject to pain, seeing that in 
Him was no sin ? the answer is found in the 
fact that Christ took our infirmity ; the disease 
of our nature was laid on Him, that He might 
remove it. He shared our feeling, that He 
might reveal the Father to us, and deliver us 
from the evil that He shared. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"DUT still this question remains : If the good 
of human life is found in that which we 
feel as painful, should we not seek pain rather 
than pleasure ? Would not the acceptance of 
this idea lead us to the arbitrary choice of 
suffering, to the wilful giving up of all that 
makes life joyous, the abrogation of the sanc- 
tities of home, the deliberate extinction of all 
that civilises ? 

Though this question is naturally suggested 
by the thoughts which precede, nothing can 
be farther from their real spirit. It is because 
the things in which we find suffering are the 
sole condition of a full and perfect happiness 
that they are good. It is because life ought 
to be joyful that we have claimed this place, 
as joy-giver, for sorrow. 

Pain is evil ; it marks, and is token of, dis- 
ease. It bespeaks want and loss. Thinking 
thus, we do not seek pain ; we do not seek 
even to be resigned to it : we seek its utter 



82 The Mystery of Pain. 

destruction, the doing away all possibility even 
of its presence. Our hearts are avaricious, 
rather, of delight, and refuse to be satisfied 
with anything less than the utmost that we 
can receive. 

For, evidently, it is an entirely different 
thing to say, Sacrifice is the good ; and to say, 
Pain is good. The association of pain with 
sacrifice, as we have sten — nay, as we know 
so well by experiences, happily, we may be- 
lieve, becoming more familiar in human life — 
is unnecessary and partial, not constant and 
inevitable. The true affinities of sacrifice are 
with pleasure, with rapture even. It is only 
by evil or want within, that sacrifice can be 
otherwise than glad. 

To dwell with joy, with deliberate choice, on 
sacrifice, even to refuse to all else the right- 
ful name of good, is not to praise or to sanc- 
tion pain, but to affirm emphatically that it 
ought not to be ; nay, that it ought not to be 
possible. That to which it has attached itself, 
the very root from which it seems to grow 
(though not, in truth, does it grow from that 
root, but from quite another, and it is a fatal 



The Mystery of Pain. 83 

error which thus mistakes its source,) should 
yield the opposite. There should be no pain 
to man : from him, as he should be, sorrow 
and sighing should flee away — but not by the 
taking away of sacrifice. 

If there be any difficulty felt here, the source 
of it will become quite manifest by recalling 
the illustration of sickness. Let us conceive, 
again, a sick man saying, " Alas ! all motion 
of my limbs, all attempt to take exercise, is 
an intolerable pain to me ; I cannot endure 
it;" and that the reply was made to him, 
" Courage, my dear friend ; do not let your- 
self think of that as painful in itself, though 
it is exquisite and unendurable torture to 
you : that is the secret of the strong man's 
pleasure, and you shall come to have perfect 
and now almost inconceivable delight in it. 
Do not let yourself confuse the poor comfort, 
necessary as it may be to you, of sinking on 
your bed and lying still, with the true enjoy- 
ments of a man." Would this reply be thought 
a praise and recommendation of pain, or to 
advise the wilful choice of it? Surely not. 
It would simply be to encourage the sick man 



84 The Mystery of Pain. 

to keep his standard of pleasure high enough, 
and not to let it be degraded by his perverted 
feeling. 

It is, in this respect, precisely the same 
thing when we rebuke ourselves for our false 
thoughts, and urge upon ourselves to recog- 
nise that, in the experience of suffering and 
loss which we feel even as unendurable dis- 
tress, we must look for, and shall find, the 
source of joy. 

In another way the true relations of this 
thought respecting pain may be illustrated. 
Let it be assumed that our object is joy, that 
this is the good at which we aim. Now here 
is in our life this fact of sacrifice, of individual 
suffering, opposing and preventing its perfect 
attainment ; hurting, harming, often render- 
ing joy impossible. Whence and what is the 
remedy to be ? How is the hurtful thing to 
be rendered harmless, the mischief to be neu- 
tralised ? Our whole knowledge of nature 
and of life concur in giving one answer : it 
must be turned to use. Things cease to hurt 
us then, and then only permanently, when 
they are made to serve our good. Nor can it 



The Mystery of Pain. 85 

be otherwise ; for nothing can be annihilated, 
nothing hindered from having, in some form 
or other, its full effect. The mere putting 
away or putting down evils has never suc- 
ceeded. They return with a violence increased 
by the delay. The one condition upon which 
we can really avoid suffering by hurtful things 
is, that we should use them and make them 
serve us. A striking instance — though it is 
but an instance of a universal law — is given 
by the problem with which every large body 
of persons has to strive, of disposing of the 
waste materials of their life. Hurtful to a 
high degree, these waste materials are the 
source of inevitable disease if they are not 
put utterly away ? But how thus utterly put 
them away ? There is but one method that 
is truly efficient, and that is, to make them 
subservient to the increase of the means of 
life, to render them the fertilisers of our lands, 
the source of food. The drainage of towns 
will either poison or be an enormous tax, or 
it will feed. The condition of its ceasing to 
be an evil is, that it shall become a good. 
Necessarily it is so : its effects cannot be made 



86 The Mystery of Pain. 

null ; our only choice is, shall they work our 
mischief or our benefit ? 

Now to point out that the noxious materials 
of our bodily life are in themselves a source 
of good, is not to encourage men to accept, or 
to deter them from removing, their ill effects. 
It is to open the path to their removal, and 
to stimulate the work. It substitutes for 
futile efforts at escape or suppression the 
rational plan of use. 

It is such a change as this that would ensue 
in our practical life from the acceptance of 
the thought that sacrifice is the source of joy, 
and that it is associated with pain to us only 
by the want that is in ourselves. It would 
never prompt us to seek pain, never lead us 
to choose it for its own sake, never lead us to 
undervalue joy. It would make enjoyment 
more sacred in our eyes, would raise it to a 
holy significance, making it teach us lessons 
beyond itself. It is an image — feeble, partial, 
and too small though it be — of that which 
should be, in its perfection, universal in our 
life. It carries on our thoughts to a higher 
joy, that should be never absent, being fullest 



The Mystery of Pain. 87 

in those portions of our life whence all joy- 
now is banished. 

But further, this view not only guards us 
from the arbitrary choice of pain, it enables 
us to trace how that abuse arose, and whence 
sprang that ascetic and self-denying spirit, 
which, while not without its grandeur, has 
inflicted so many injuries on men. Mankind 
have always recognised a goodness in things 
that are painful. In no time or place has the 
feeling been wholly absent ; but they have 
not always understood the reason. It was not 
recognised that these things are good only 
because they are sacrifice, and subserve others' 
welfare, and are therefore the true source of 
gladness ; that they are good in a familiar 
and human sense, because they are adapted 
to give joy. Hence men unavoidably mistook, 
and attributed the goodness they could not 
but recognise in them to that which is em- 
phatically not good — to that which is the sign 
of our own evil — the pain that was connected 
with them. They ascribed to pain the good- 
ness which belongs to sacrifice as the giver, 
above all other things, of joy. A strange and 



88 The Mystery of Pain. 

yet an inevitable inversion of thought, while 
the affections had not as yet fully recog- 
nised the joy that is in sacrifice, nor faith 
apprehended the relation of all human life to 
the unseen work that God does in man. 

It was thus asceticism arose, seeking pain 
as good, self-denial as an end ; and thus it 
failed. But the lesson it teaches remains for 
us. There is good in that which we find 
painful : the human soul does and will recog- 
nise it ; nor can luxury, nor scorn, nor the 
history of innumerable ills wrought by pursu- 
ing pain, prevent. Man's soul recurs to it in 
spite of experience, in spite of enlightenment, 
in spite of ease. 

Surely one thing alone can cure asceticism 
of its error, and free mankind from its dangers ; 
and that is, to recognise the true nature of the 
good that is in sacrifice ; that it is good, not 
for itself, nor because it involves pain, but pre- 
cisely because it is not for itself, and is the 
true root of pleasure. If this be recognised, 
asceticism cannot again arise to distort life 
and tax humanity beyond its powers ; the 
elements of our nature in which it has its root 



The Mystery of Pain. 89 



arc turned into another channel, and find 
their satisfaction in deeds animated by an- 
other spirit. 

A perfect guide, indeed, is given us thus in 
respect to the acts of sacrifice we should or 
should not undertake. Only that painful 
thing is good which has in it the root of 
pleasure. And this is that alone which serves 
others' good. Therefore no arbitrary, self- 
chosen sacrifice is good ; there is no source 
of joy in that ; it fails of the first condition. 
Only that sacrifice is good which either we 
accept for another's sake, ourselves seeing 
and choosing the result ; or that which serves 
a like end unseen by us ; and surely better 
serves a better end, being in God's hands, and 
not ours. For seen or unseen service sacri- 
fice is good, but only when it is for service. 

And this service either we accomplish for 
ourselves, or God works for us. We accom- 
plish it when we consciously act from love or 
duty, and are blest in witnessing the service 
rendered. But God works it for us when He 
inflicts on us pains or losses ; that is, when 
necessity enforces them, or right commands. 



90 The Mystery of Pain. 

In these He is our minister, our Steward, to 
bestow better than we could do the service of 
our love. In sacrifices that we cannot escape, 
that come from Providence or deeds of men 
who in this are God's instruments, and in sac- 
rifices for which He calls in duty, we recog- 
nise His hand, and know that they are used 
by Him. We feel our hearts glowing with 
a delight that humility does not forbid, "in 
this the Lord hath need of us." So far, He 
uses and blesses us, undertaking Himself to 
be the dispenser of our gifts. 

The best in life, then, reading it by faith, as 
seeing the invisible (which not to do is blind- 
ness and self-chosen error,) the best in life is 
that part of it wherein there is inflicted on us, 
or rather accepted from us, inevitable sacri- 
fice ; it is in losses that we cannot escape, 
pains that God calls on us to bear, bafflings 
from which no effort can set us free, no up- 
rightness deliver ; or in that part of it wherein 
the voice of duty bids us incur loss or pain, or 
leave unacted the deeds that would delight us 
most. These things are the best in life ; for 
these are God using us, these are His taking 



The Mystery of Pain. 91 

our poor services — poor at the best, though 
they may be great to us — and Himself using 
them in ways too good, too deep and wide 
for us to see. These are our contribution 
to the redemption of the world, felt as pain- 
ful because the sources of a joy too great, 
which we make our own by freely yielding, 
and accepting them ; thus making God's deed 
ours. Must not this be the best in life, 
the highest privilege? We link our weak- 
ness with omnipotence; our blindness with 
omniscience. This is the privilege of the 
destitute, the sick, the feeble, of those who 
are thwarted and cast down, who cannot save 
themselves. Behold, to them too it is given 
to save others. 

Next to this privilege in goodness, among 
the things that life can offer us, come the 
sacrifices we can bear willingly for the good 
of .others; less good, indeed, but seeming 
more to us, a good that we can see, and 
consciously subserve. 

These are the portions of our life that rise 
to the level of true goodness. Each yields 
us joy in proportion to our love; the greatest 



92 The Mystery of Pain. 

privilege demanding for its joy, even because 
it is the greatest, faith as well as love. 

Besides these, and separated from them by 
an immeasurable interval, there are the plea- 
sures which are not of sacrifice, the pleasures 
of mere enjoyment : not truly good, yet not 
without their value. These are the portions 
of our life that cannot be employed for their 
best use ; that our disability compels us to 
leave unturned to their true account ; the 
alleviations which our sickness needs, and 
must bow itself to accept. 

There are then, in this respect, three ele- 
ments in our life : — First, the perfect good, 
which comes to us in the form of providential 
and inevitable sacrifice, or loss that right 
demands, on the full gladness of which we 
enter by faith, knowing in our hearts that 
which we cannot see. Next, there is the 
good, less, but still great and worthy of our 
manhood, the serving others consciously, and 
of our own free will, for ends within our sight, 
the joy of which is in proportion to our 
love. In this is included all honest and un- 
selfish work. And lastly, there are the pica- 



The Mystery of Pain. 93 

sures we can gain for ourselves, the satisfac- 
tions of an individual kind with which our life 
is so abundantly surrounded. These last mark 
our feebleness and want ; but they are need- 
ful for us, and our enjoyment of them is essen- 
tial. In so far as they give joy, they are types 
and reflections of the perfect life, though in a 
negative and inverse form. We understand 
their nature if we look on them as like the 
reliefs and perverted pleasures which the sick 
man demands ; not good, but to us necessary, 
and by us felt as good. This necessity and 
this feeling mark our disability, our need of a 
restored and perfect life. 

And thus we see, from another point of 
view, the error of asceticism. The attempt 
to render man independent of self-enjoyment 
is an ignoring of his disease ; it is an attempt 
to act as if in health while health is wanting 
to us. It Is not only our right, it is our duty 
to enjoy and to be happy. This is evident on 
all grounds. It is fitting to our state, and it 
is practically right. Pleasure does us good if 
gratefully and lovingly accepted ; the nature 
often expands and blossoms under it as under 



94 The Mystery of Pain. 

no other influence. And suffering oftentimes, 
not felt as the spring of joy it is, sours, cramps, 
and hardens. We cannot dispense with joy; 
we were never meant to dispense with it ; but 
we should seek it rightly. 

Neither is there any tendency in the thought 
of sacrifice as the true source of joy to diminish 
the pleasurableness of that which we may call 
self-pleasure, or in any way to mar our natural 
enjoyments. It may, indeed, throw them into 
the shade, and relax somewhat (would to God 
it might !) the passion of our grasp upon them 
and pursuit after them ; but this is only by 
bringing them into the presence of another 
and superior pleasure. It is but as the boy 
less values childish sports as he grows into 
an appreciation of the serious gratifications 
of maturity, and sees that they have served 
their purpose in awakening capacities and 
calling forth desires they were never meant 
to fill 



CHAPTER IX. 

/ T~~ v WO things might be here attempted : 
on the one hand, to trace farther the 
bearing of these thoughts upon our custom- 
ary views ; and on the other, to show how they 
might influence our life. But it seems better to 
leave them now untouched. These few pages 
have been written rather for some than for 
all, for those whom a special discipline may 
have prepared to welcome them ; and to these 
I commit the thought, painfully conscious of 
my inability to say it as it should be said, an 
inability which those to whom I have written 
will at once feel most deeply, and most will- 
ingly forgive. To them I may say — for they 
w r hose tongues have often faltered and been 
dumb from very eagerness of passion, and 
dread lest any words, even the best, should 
spoil their story, will understand me — that 
great desire and fear have hindered me. These 
words I have stammered through ; let them 
read, in their feebleness, reverence ; a tribute 



9 6 The Mystery of Pain. 

to the sacredness of grief, made more sacred 
by the glory of its consolation. 

I do not seek to show whether, or in what 
way, other thoughts, natural and perhaps 
established thoughts, might need to be modi- 
fied in order not to conflict with these. There 
would probably be much less demand for 
change than might be supposed by those to 
whom the preceding thoughts may seem new. 
It may, however, serve to guard against mis- 
take, if I say that of course no meritorious 
character is ascribed to human sufferings. 
Man's redemption is accomplished in them ; 
not in any way by virtue of them ; the resto- 
ration of humanity is carried out in our ex- 
perience, not wrought by us. I need scarcely 
say that, because in these pages man's con-' 
dition has been compared to that of disease, 
it is not to be supposed that other aspects of 
his state are not recognised, especially his 
sinfulness ; or that Christ's work in relation 
to sin is lightly valued. But there has been 
the less reason for reference to these things, 
because I have left untouched the question 
of sin, and designedly limited myself to a 



The Mystery of Pain. gj 

smaller problem. Hereafter light may per- 
haps be thrown even upon that profoundest 
of all mysteries, man's revolt from God, and 
deliberate choice of evil. I may perhaps be 
pardoned for thinking that to understand 
pain aright may tend to lessen, rather than 
to aggravate, the difficulty of the greater 
mystery of sin. 

It may seem to some that more mention 
should be made of pains that arise from sym- 
pathy, and so have their source in love. Let 
me say that, as these are among the acutest 
of human sufferings, an emphatic reference 
has been made to them in that which has 
preceded. Love can transform them, though 
it gives them birth. While any loved ones 
sorrow and are in distress, sympathy with 
them must be sorrowful too ; but if all sac- 
rifice is made joyful, then sympathy with 
others' sacrifice will be sympathy with their 
joy. These sorrows, also, man's perfect life 
will turn into rejoicing. 

In so far as these thoughts respecting pain 

depend on a recognition of unseen ends served 

by it, it seems to me that the recent ten- 

a 



98 The Mystery of Pain. 

dency of the human mind is wonderfully, and 
surely most happily, in harmony with them. 
What better could the students of Nature and 
the students of Humanity agree in telling us 
than this — their great lesson in these modern 
days — that the true essence and meaning of 
all things is hidden from our natural sight ? 
What is this but to echo back the words we 
have so familiarly heard from childhood up- 
ward, till they have perhaps partly lost their 
force, which bid us live as seeing the invisible, 
and walk, not by sight but by faith ? If this 
is the last lesson of science, it is also the first 
lesson of religion ; perhaps now better to be 
learnt than ever before, and better understood, 
because reiterated from this new region, and 
enforced by this new evidence. To under- 
stand or feel our life aright, we must regard 
something not visible to ourselves : we must, 
in fact, be using faith. This, science tells us ; 
this, philosophy. Shall they tell it to us in 
vain — to us who need so deeply to believe and 
act upon it, whose whole life is shrouded in 
darkness if it be not true, and may be, nay, 
must be, radiant with an unutterable glory 



The Mystery of Pain. 99 

and delight if it be true ? Shall we refuse 
God's gifts because they come to us from 
unexpected quarters ? shall we refuse to 
listen to this confirmation of the gladdest 
message, because it is given in unfamiliar 
tones ? 

And in respect to the practical bearing of 
these thoughts respecting pain, I refrain from 
speaking, partly because I feel incompetent, 
but more because I feel that it is not neces- 
sary. That they must have practical influence 
where they are truly felt, surely is evident : 
what influence they should have, perhaps, is 
better left to each person's heart than stated 
in another's words. If the thought can sink 
and take root in the soul, it will bear fruit ; 
better fruit spontaneously than if conformed to 
any pattern. Nor, indeed, are circumstances 
so much alike in different cases that external 
actions can be conformed to special rules. 
This seems enough : a beautiful external life 
is the fruit of life within, especially of that life 
which dwells in joy. If joy could be brought 
to sorrow-stricken hearts, their path would 
blossom with good deeds ; the gladness w T ithin 



I oo The Mystery of Pain. 

would overflow in acts of heroism and devo- 
tion, not uncalled for even yet. 

And does not joy grow out of sorrow when 
we see it thus — an infinite and tender joy 
passing all other ? Do we not feel the very 
throbbings of God's heart, and see even this 
sad world beautiful and good beyond concep- 
tion, beyond hope ; the poor, the miserable, 
the blighted and shipwrecked lives clothed 
with a sublimity grand, and yet exquisitely 
tender, that pales before it the best joys of 
earth, fair and blessed though they be ? It is 
good to be blest in health, and strength, and 
family, and friends, and prospects, and suc- 
cess ; in capacity, and power, and scope for 
usefulness ; in love returned, and growing 
with its return, giving and receiving more 
with every year; in deeds of wide benefi- 
cence which enrich the lives of nations. It 
is good to be blest so; but not so good as 
to be sacrificed, poor and wretched, halt and 
maimed and bruised, heart-broken, spiritless, 
incapable, lost utterly — so sacrificed for man's 
redemption. That is to be like Christ ; it is 
to hear Him say, " Thou drinkest of my cup ; 



The Mystery of Pain. 101 

with my baptism art baptized. I make thee 
one with me, the destined sharer of my 
joy." 

It is not too much ; no, it is not too much ; 
but it is more than can be given, save in 
utterest abasement. The head on which this 
bliss is poured must be bowed into the 
dust. 

We cry in our agony, in weakness, failure, 
perplexity of heart, that there is no hope nor 
help. No hand seems to direct the storm, no 
pity listens. " God has forsaken us," we say. 
Do we say so, and not recall the words which 
fell in that great victory on Calvary — fell from 
the Conqueror's lips, " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? " Blackness of dark- 
ness and despair, and sorrow blotting out 
God's hand, and feebleness sinking without a 
stay, these are not failure. In these charac- 
ters was written first the charter of our deli- 
verance ; these are the characters in which it 
is renewed. 



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" There is. within my knowledge, no other work on the same portions of the 
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PRIMARY TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 

By Right Ret. THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. I>., 

BISHOP OF KHODE ISLAND. 

1 vol,, 12mo. Price, $1.00. 

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